In the article, the author presents the basic relations between a nation state and a multicultural society. According to the author, the attitude of the nation state and the dominant nation in the state to the phenomenon of cultural diversity of society is a key phenomenon in the theory and practice of multiculturalism. Namely, the nation state is characterized by two strategies defining the attitude to the cultural diversity of society. It is a strategy of cultural homogenization and a pluralistic. The emergence of a pluralistic strategy begins with the occurrence and eventual growth of phenomena and processes referred to as multiculturalism and multicultural society.

This article investigates the engagement of EU law with the interests represented and pursued by the Member States within the framework of the European Union. In principle, because the interests which the Member States feed into the EU governance machinery are formulated in political processes at the national level, and thus possess paramount political legitimacy, EU law may only interact with those interests when a clear and sufficient mandate has been provided for doing so. Such mandates follow from Treaty provisions or EU legislation. They embody common political agreements among the Member States by which they commit themselves to realising the specific interests they share, as well as achieving related common policy objectives. In practice, however, the boundaries of EU law’s mandate are difficult to determine with precision, and this may weaken the legitimacy of EU law’s interventions. The weaker legitimacy of the law raises particular problems in the law of the Single Market, where the interests pursued by national governments are subjected to filtering, moderation, and even transformation by the Court of Justice.

In this paper the identification problem is considered for initial conditionsin a non-minimal state-space model that includes interpretable state variablesgenerated by non-stationary stochastic processes. In order to solve theidentification problem, structural restrictions are imposed on initial conditionsin a state-space model with redundant state variables. The correspondingrestricted maximum likelihood estimator of initial conditions is derived.The restricted estimator of initial conditions can be used in order tocompute uniquely identified realizations of interpretable latent variables. Theidentification problem is illustrated analytically using a simple structuraleconomic model.

Leak detection in transmission pipelines is important for safe operation of pipelines. The probability of leaks may be occurred at any time and location, therefore pipeline leak detection systems play a key role in minimization of the occurrence of leaks probability and their impacts. During the operation of the network there are various accidents or intentional actions that lead to leaks of gas pipelines. For each network failure, a quick reaction is needed before it causes more damage. Methods that are used to detect such network failures are three-staged-: early identification of leakage, an accurate indication of its location and determine the amount of lost fluid. Methods for leak detection can be divided into two main groups: external methods (hardware) and internal methods (software). External leak detection methods require additional, often expensive equipment mounted on the network, or use systems that could display only local damage on the pipeline. The alternative are the internal methods which use available network measurements and signalling gas leakage signal based on the mathematical models of the gas flow. In this paper, a new method of leak detection based on a mathematical model of gas flow in a transient state has been proposed.

Electrical circuits with state-feedbacks are addressed. It is shown that by suitable choice of the gain matrices of state-feedbacks it is possible to obtain the closed-loop system matrices with nilpotency indices equal to two and their state variables are linear functions of time. The considerations are illustrated by linear electrical circuits.

The analysis of the positivity and stability of linear electrical circuits by the use of state-feedbacks is addressed. Generalized Frobenius matrices are proposed and their properties are investigated. It is shown that if the state matrix of an electrical circuit has generalized Frobenius form then the closed-loop system matrix is not positive and asymptotically stable. Different cases of modification of the positivity and stability of linear electrical circuits by state-feedbacks are discussed and necessary conditions for the existence of solutions to the problem are established.

The stability of positive linear continuous-time and discrete-time systems is analyzed by the use of the decomposition of the state matrices into symmetrical and antisymmetrical parts. It is shown that: 1) The state Metzler matrix of positive continuous-time linear system is Hurwitz if and only if its symmetrical part is Hurwitz; 2) The state matrix of positive linear discrete-time system is Schur if and only if its symmetrical part is Hurwitz. These results are extended to inverse matrices of the state matrices of the positive linear systems.

The paper presents the response of a three-layered annular plate with damaged laminated facings to the loads acting in their planes. The presented problem concerns the analysis of the combination of global plate failure in the form of buckling with the local micro defects, like fibre or matrix cracks, located in the laminas. The plate structure consists of thin laminated, fibre-reinforced composite facings and a thicker foam core. The matrix and fibre cracks of facings laminas can be transversally symmetrically or asymmetrically located in plate structure. Critical static and dynamic stability analyses were carried out solving the problem numerically and analytically. The numerical results show the static and dynamic stability state of the composite plate with different combinations of damages. The final results are compared with those for undamaged structure of the plate and treated as quasi-isotropic ones. The analysed problem makes it possible to evaluate the use of the non-ideal composite plate structure in practical applications.

The paper presents two competing perceptions of the modern university: the economic and the humanistic. While the economic approach has numerous and potent advocates in the modern, rationalized world, those opting for the humanist approach have to struggle for attention and understanding. The author aims to highlight the conflict between the two seemingly contradictory visions of the university in her sociological commentary about the debate over the importance of the humanities in Poland and worldwide. There exists, however, a kind of ontological meta-frame which allows the rhetoric of a ‘factory of knowledge’ and a ‘temple of knowledge’ to be accommodated. It consists in thinking of universities in universalistic categories, which should be the concern of the state as it seeks Poland’s civilizational advance—in the full meaning of the phrase.

Since 1999 studies are conducted of specific form of corruption known as ‘state capture’. This term refers to a situation in which individual agents and groups of interests are seeking to shape and affect the process of formulating regulations to their advantage through illicit and non-transparent means. In other words, state capture is an attempt of a group of interest to change institutionalized rules of the market game in a way favorable for them in order to gain political rents. This paper is a reconstruction of economic studies on phenomenon of state capture. The first part of paper is devoted to presentation of state capture in context of other forms of corruption. It focuses mainly on series of survey studies known as Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) conducted by World Bank and EBRD. The second part of the paper is a critical analysis of state capture conception and methodology. The text points out limitations of economical research procedures in domain of corruption analysis. Methodological difficulties and restrictions of conception of state capture are discussed on an example of chosen political affair – Buchacz triangle. The paper ends with sociological reinterpretation of conception of state capture.

The paper concerns the problem of state assignment for finite state machines (FSM), targeting at PAL-based CPLDs implementations. Presented in the paper approach is dedicated to state encoding of fast automata. The main idea is to determine the number of logic levels of the transition function before the state encoding process, and keep the constraints during the process. The number of implicants of every single transition function must be known while assigning states, so elements of two level minimization based on Primary and Secondary Merging Conditions are implemented in the algorithm. The method is based on code length extraction if necessary. In one of the most basic stages of the logic synthesis of sequential devices, the elements referring to constraints of PAL-based CPLDs are taken into account.

This paper discusses the challenges faced by the empirical macroeconomist and methods for surmounting them. These challenges arise due to the fact that macroeconometric models potentially include a large number of variables and allow for time variation in parameters. These considerations lead to models which have a large number of parameters to estimate relative to the number of observations. A wide range of approaches are surveyed which aim to overcome the resulting problems. We stress the related themes of prior shrinkage, model averaging and model selection. Subsequently, we consider a particular modelling approach in detail. This involves the use of dynamic model selection methods with large TVP-VARs. A forecasting exercise involving a large US macroeconomic data set illustrates the practicality and empirical success of our approach.

The paper presents a one-dimensional mathematical model for simulating the transient processes which occur in the liquid flat-plate solar collector tubes. The proposed method considers the model of collector tube as one with distributed parameters. In the suggested method one tube of the collector is taken into consideration. In this model the boundary conditions can be time-dependent. The proposed model is based on solving the equation describing the energy conservation on the fluid side. The temperature of the collector tube wall is determined from the equation of transient heat conduction. The derived differential equations are solved using the implicit finite difference method of iterative character. All thermo-physical properties of the operating fluid and the material of the tube wall can be computed in real time. The time-spatial heat transfer coefficient at the working fluid side can be also computed on-line. The proposed model is suitable for collectors working in a parallel or serpentine tube arrangement. As an illustration of accuracy and effectiveness of the suggested method the computational verification was carried out. It consists in comparing the results found using the presented method with results of available analytic solutions for transient operating conditions. Two numerical analyses were performed: for the tube with temperature step function of the fluid at the inlet and for the tube with heat flux step function on the outer surface. In both cases the conformity of results was very good. It should be noted, that in real conditions such rapid changes of the fluid temperature and the heat flux of solar radiation, as it was assumed in the presented computational verification, do not occur. The paper presents the first part of the study, which aim is to develop a mathematical model for simulating the transient processes which occur in liquid flat-plate solar collectors. The experimental verification of the method is a second part of the study and is not presented in this paper. In order to perform this verification, the mathematical model would be completed with additional energy conservation equations. The experimental verification will be carry out in the close future.

The sound speed and parameters of nonlinearity B/A, C/A in a fluid are expressed in terms of coefficients in the Taylor series expansion of an excess internal energy, in powers of excess pressure and density. That allows to conclude about features of the sound propagation in fluids, the internal energy of which is known as a function of pressure and density. The sound speed and parameters of nonlinearity in the mixture consisting of boiling water and its vapor under different temperatures, are evaluated as functions of mass concentration of the vapor. The relations analogous to that in the Riemann wave in an ideal gas are obtained in a fluid obeying an arbitrary equation of state. An example concerns the van der Waals gases. An excess pressure in the reflected wave, which appears when standard or nonlinear absorption in a fluid takes place, is evaluated in an arbitrary fluid.

Acidification, as a form of soil degradation is a process that leads to permanent reduction in the quality of soil as the most important natural resource. The process of soil acidification, which in the first place implies a reduction in soil pH, can be caused by natural processes, but also considerably accelerated by the anthropogenic influence of excessive S and N emissions, uncontrolled deforestation, and intensive agricultural processes. Critical loads, i.e. the upper limit of harmful depositions (primarily of S and N) which will not cause damages to the ecosystem, were determined in Europe under the auspices of the Executive Committee of the CLRTAP in 1980. These values represent the basic indicators of ecosystem stability to the process of acidification. This paper defines the status of acidification for the period up to 2100 in relation to the long term critical and target loading of soil with S and N on the territory of Krupanj municipality by applying the VSD model. The Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) geostatistic module was used as the interpolation method. Land management, particularly in areas susceptible to acidification, needs to be focused on well-balanced agriculture and use of crops/seedlings to achieve the optimum land use and sustainable productivity for the projected 100-year period.